


gold

by blackholenipples



Series: femslash february [7]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 11:59:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13833834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackholenipples/pseuds/blackholenipples
Summary: "The colour of your pain will always match that of your other half. And the first mark to scar your soulmate's skin is the only one that will never fade."





	gold

Shuri burns her wrist on a piece of scrap vibranium off a lathe when she’s seven. It scars, a tiny raised star on her skin that will not fade until it meets its twin. She is eight when her soulmate’s first scar sears its way across her elbow.

They say she is blessed with a golden bond.

King T’Chaka makes a proclamation that day.

_Any man who comes to the palace shall have his forearms exposed to the eyes of the King._

There will be others that join it. Almost every new project sears golden lines across her skin. At sixteen, there’s a web of golden threads across from her shoulders to her nails and a wide, flat pane of once-burnt skin across her breastbone.

Her brother finds Nakia as a child. The whole kingdom knows of the day that the prince’s violet scars faded to black on the playground. The tales say that soulmates are guaranteed a happy ending, but T’Challa will do his duty to his people and Nakia will do her best for the world. There is little time for love in the space between their callings.

She has never asked whether Queen Mother Ramonda and King T’Chaka are soulmates. When her father dies, Shuri decides she does not want to know.

M’Baku has stripes of silver across the back of his hands, old scars from a tiger’s attack. Shuri has never seen anyone else with the same shimmering metallic sheen on their skin that she has.

He smiles at her and tells her to come back if she has still not met her soulmate in a decade.

 

Erik leaves a set of four perfect golden spheres on top of each of her collarbones.

Within a week, she decides that her match is not in Wakanda. Enough of her people know of the princess with gold across her skin that her soulmate should have found her years ago.

So Shuri goes to America, where she can help people who don’t consider her their princess, but who are hers nonetheless. She sets up her shop in a building in Oakland and spends her time as a doctor instead of an inventor. She loves creating, but nothing she can make will be worth a human life, so she chooses to spend some time fixing what is broken instead of constantly trying to make something new.

They do not have soulmates here. Their scars are all lines of raised skin and slight discoloration.

Shuri wears a white coat and plastic gloves and stops searching.

She helps Nakia help the people that need them. Between the two of them, they can solve many of these people’s problems, but the evils of the world are never-ending.

Shuri builds a bike. She leaves her lab coat to a recently-graduated boy from the area who is willing to fix his neighbours with Wakandan supplies and Wakandan pay. She leaves her sister in all but blood behind with the work she loves and goes on the road.

Much of America is empty. It is endless fields and mountains.

The cities are dirty and gritty and loud. There is none of the elegant lines and colour of her home, but they are beautiful in their ugliness.

Shuri is eighteen when she settles in New York.

She goes to medical school, because she may have the knowledge, but she does not have the necessary letters behind her name to be heard when she talks of the future and of technologies they can adapt to save the lives of countless people.

She lives in a small apartment with a roommate who wants to sing on Broadway and a fake twitter she uses to argue with Tony Stark about his theory of the week. She wears tank tops and jeans and tells people that her tattoos are traditional of her people.

 

She is twenty and almost ready to give up and go home when a girl comes in dragging Peter Parker straight to Shuri’s lab in SHEILD medical. There is fire in her eyes and gold on her wrist.

She turns, and her elbow reflects the light.

Shuri made it through medical school in eighteen months and she fixes impossible injuries on a regular basis. She has no idea what makes her breath catch and her heart skips.

(She knows exactly why, and it has nothing to do with the knot of worry in her throat that Peter’s head is half-covered in blood. Again.)

She nods to the table and Peter sits. He pulls the mask off and the girl gasps.

Shuri’s been friends with Peter Parker since she saved Spiderman from Doc Oc with a EMP three days after she moved to New York.

She ignores the girl long enough to scan him. Luckily Peter’s got a hard head. No concussion this time, and no soft tissue damage in any of the cranial regions or neck.

Lucky indeed. She wipes him down and slaps a dressing on the sluggishly-bleeding contusion above his ear.

“You’re fine.”

“Thanks Princess,” Peter grins at her, wide and innocent. “You wanna come for drinks? MJ’s twenty-one tonight!”

Neither she nor Peter are, but Director Fury gives out fake IDs like candy, so…

“Pete.” The girl, MJ, looks somewhere between disapproving and amused, “do you want to introduce us before you go inviting strangers to my birthday barcrawl?”

Shuri puts a hand over her heart and bows.

MJ looks a little taken aback. The things you can get away with in this country will never cease to amaze her.

She’s not quite ready to let this stranger know what they could be to each other.

“I am Princess Shuri of Wakanda, the Golden Jaguar of the New Avengers.”

“M.D.” Parker adds brightly.

MJ nods, unimpressed. “Michelle Jones, Pre-Law at NYU. I’m Spiderman’s PR intern part-time because SHIELD needed someone who can effectively Pete-wrangle and they pay like thirty bucks an hour plus benefits.”

Peter pouts. Michelle glares at him and he slinks off, hopefully to change out of the blood and soot-covered spandex for the day.

“So, Pretty girl. Princess and genius. You can come if you tell me what those are.” She moves her hand as though to touch one of the golden marks on Shuri’s arm, but hesitates at the last moment before contact.  “I’ve had a pair that look like these two since I was a kid. No idea why I don’t scar like a normal person, but you seem like you might.”

She makes eye contact and Shuri smiles sheepishly. It might have been foolish to expect a friend of Peter’s to be incurious.

“They are Wakandan markings. All of my people have them.” She takes a breath and leans forward. Slowly. Michelle’s breath catches and her eyes seem drawn down to Shuri’s lips.

Good.

Lips against the shell of her ear, Shuri whispers. “They are a physical manifestation of our souls. The colour of your pain will always match that of your other half. And the first scar of your soulmate is the only one that will never fade.”

Back home, Princess Shuri used to be known for brilliance and impulsiveness. She wonders for a second when she became a cog in the machine of a man like Nick Fury.

She draws back a hair and brushes her lips against the warm skin of Michelle’s cheek.

There’s a brief instant when it feels like she’s lying under the summer sun of her homeland, enveloped in warmth and comfort and _home._

And then it’s over and Michelle is staring at her.

She smiles, slow and hesitant, but it changes her whole face. Suddenly this classic New-Yorker in her ripped jeans and flannel shirt looks like someone Shuri wouldn’t mind bringing home. She’s beautiful in the way of the Dora Milaje, of the Lionesses of the Plains. Strong and fierce and proud.

“I don’t know if I believe in soulmates. But I believe I might like to buy you a drink. And please, my friends call me MJ.”

Shuri grins. “I would love a drink, but only if you’re willing to call me Shuri.”

MJ nods and holds out a hand. There’s a tiny gold spot that almost looks like a star embedded in her skin.

Shuri takes it and lets herself be pulled along.


End file.
